DANISH MUSIC FOR BRASS 8
DANISH MUSIC FOR BRASS
Is a series of recordings with brass players from the Royal Danish Orchestra
as chamber music players or soloists
VAGN HOLMBOE :
QUINTET op.79
1 – Moderato
2 – Intermezzo
3 – Andante cantabile
4 – Finale
Ketil Christensen and Bjarne Nielsen – trumpet/Henning Hansen – horn
Keld Jørgensen – trombone/Hans Andersen – tuba
NOTATIONS op.140
Thorbjörn Kroon – alto trombone/Keld Jørgensen – tenor trombone
Jan Mortensen – bass trombone/Mogens Andresen – euphonium (tenor tuba)
Executive producer – Ole Høglund
TRIADE op.123
for TRUMPET and ORGAN
I – Tempo Giusto
II – Andante
III – Allegro
ROYAL DANISH ORCHESTRA BRASS QUINTET
KETIL CHRISTENSEN AND BJARNE NIELSEN – TRUMPET,
HENNING HANSEN – HORN, KELD JØRGENSEN – TROMBONE, MOGENS ANDRESEN – EUPHONIUM
JENS E.. CHRISTENSEN and KETIL CHRISTENSEN
KETIL CHRISTENSEN studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Music with Kurt Petersen and became only 19 years old principal trumpet in The Royal Danish Orchestra. Co-founder of The Royal danish Orchestra Brass Ensemble and member of the chamber orchestra Collegium Musicum, Copenhagen. Has made many recordings and engagements as soloist. in 1980 he won a prize at the international competition for soloists in Munich and has later been a member of the jury at the same competition in 2018. Has been teaching trumpet at The royal Danish Academy of Music. The recipient of the Gade Scholarship and Gladsaxe Music Award.
JENS E. CHRISTENSEN (1946-) Organist at The Church of Our Saviour in Copenhagen. His concert career has taken him all over the world and many composers has written works dedicated to him.
THE ROYAL DANISH ORCHESTRA
The Royal Danish Orchestra’s emblem, the Royal Trumpeter Corps. Engraving from 1583. The Royal Danish Orchestra is the the world’s oldest orchestral institution. It started out 1448 as a trumpeter corps, and today it is an opera and symphony orchestra based at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen.
VAGN HOLMBOE (1909-1996)
At the age of 16 Vagn Holmboe (1909-96) was admitted to the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen as a violinist. In the entrance examination he was heard by the national composer Carl Nielsen who also looked through some of his compositions. The earliest works by Holmboe known today were written the next year, and these include a string quartet. This was the first of ten quartets that Holmboe wrote before he gave a work the title String Quartet no. 1 at the age of 40. In the beginning of the 1930s, during a study trip to Paris, Holmboe met the Romanian pianist Meta Graf. They eventually married, and she introduced him to the folk music of the Balkans. “There was something elemental in this music,” Holmboe said. By the beginning of the 1930s Vagn Holmboe had already composed a large number of works, but had given very few of them the seal of an opus number. His breakthrough came in 1939, when he won the Royal Danish Orchestra’s composition competition with his Symphony No 2. With the money prize he bought a country property by the lake Arresø in northern Zealand, where he built his home and lived until his death in 1996. Until 1950 Vagn Holmboe taught at the Danish Institute for the Blind, and then he was engaged by the Royal Danish Academy of Music. He was professor of composition and theory until 1965, when he retired to devote all his time to composing. Vagn Holmboe wrote almost 400 works, especially instrumental music.His QUINTET op. 79 for brass quintet was written for one of the pioneer ensembles for brass chamber music, The New York Brass Quintet, in 1965. NOTATIONS for LOW BRASS (alto trombone, tenor trombone, bass trombone and tuba) was written on request from the tuba player Asger Fredericia and was first performed in The Yong Composers Society in 1981 by him and his colleagues in The Royal Danish Orchestra. For this recording the tuba part is played on euphonium (tenor tuba).
